Friday, July 20, 2012

Romney agonistes

It all depends on what the meaning of the word control is.

Mitt Romney is working the thesaurus hard in trying to explain why he was "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” of Bain Capital but not the one making decisions on anything other his own severance.

The Globe spells out that Romney's relationship with the firm he founded was pretty much what he defined it to be at any given moment. The one last, overriding deal involved the leveraged buyout of Willard M. Romney:

“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in
investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and
therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his
giving up of that control,” said one former associate, who, like some
other Romney associates, spoke only on condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to speak for the company.

There's only one thing clear in the verbal gymnastics on display in this ongoing story, which includes Romney's adamant refusal to release tax records that might shed light on his severance and subsequent overseas havens in which it landed. The presumptive GOP nominee did not receive a mere two weeks severance and a handshake of thanks that some Americans get when they leave a job.

And it was a lot better than the layoff notices that Bain, the company he nurtured and built into this image, helped hand out during and after his tenure, whether it was the companies that closed their doors forever or those who moved their operations overseas.

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

The rich are not living in the same world as most 99%'ers. When they leave their jobs they don't get the same type of benefits as most of us, but that's the private sector. When it happens for the public employees, like Billy Bulger getting his housing allowance added to his already hefty pension, then I have problems with it. The Republicans steal from the average guy through their companies, the Democrats steal from the average guy through their cronies.